And he was beautiful.
Mrs Lovett ran the silver of the kitchen knife along the sleeping throat of Benjamin Barker, not hard enough to pierce the flesh and spill the crimson life force that pumped around his body, which was if he still had a heart to pump. She just left the little imprint of the blade on his skin. He was far away; the empty gin bottle in his hand told her that. He was most defiantly absent from his body.
There was nothing to light the room but the flicker of a single candle, the way it illuminated the sickly yellow of the wall paper reminder her of the fire that had burnt in the church that the wallpaper had once hung in. A shiver travelled down her spine causing her chest to quiver in her corset. It was a cold night in the world outside and it wasn't much warmer in the attic room above the pie shop.
She wanted to ram the knife through his neck, or into his chest, or his stomach. She wanted to tear his insides out to know if he was human. If there was anything of feeling inside him, he was just a creature with want of feeling. A nothing trapped in a flesh and bone body little better than a corpse. She wanted to hate him. Wanted to have never laid eyes on him all those years ago; she knew that she would have been better without him in her world.
She could have been a happy widow, making her pies not a care in the world; she might even have been able to move one. But no, she was stuck in a dismal attic with him. With the lump of nothing that he was, laying there with the gin still clinging to his lips with a smile. She couldn't remember the last time she had seen him smile in the waking hours. He must have been having good dreams.
Selfish bastard...What right do you have to sweet dreams?
He must have been dreaming of her that was the only thing that could make him smile like that. Lucy, his yellow haired slut, who cracked her slit for the dirty old judge and maybe every other man in London while her beautiful husband was suffering for her charms.
She had probably enjoyed the judge in her.
Mrs Lovett hated herself for thinking it the second that she did, she had seen the look in Lucy's eyes that pain that you just couldn't fake, it was the only reason that she had helped her when she had crawled on her hands and knees her petticoats ripping with every movement that she took; the rain beating her every second. They had something in common that night; they were kindred spirits one woman as light as they other dark. They would have crawled across the dirt ridden streets of London to be with him; to be with Benjamin Barker.
It was his name that Lucy called out, the way he called out hers and with every exclamation of pain Mrs Lovett felt as though it was her throat being cut with the razor. And it may as well have been, she couldn't speak while she listened to the exclamations of love that even though they were oceans apart they still had. She had had to look after her; it was what Benjamin would have wanted; Lucy to be taken good care of.
It was all she could have done for him. it was a link to him, his wife.
He must have been thinking about her, he was smiling and there was something growing on him, beneath the material prison of his groin. Mrs Lovett licked her lips, it was juicer than any meat pie she had ever made or ever tasted. She wanted to wrap her lips around it but that was too risky he could wake up at any moment and if he did she was sure it would be her throat pressed against the shill of cold steal, only Sweeny would not be kind enough to only leave the imprint of the blade he would slice across her neck and delight in the way her blood ran down her chest and stained her clothes.
She realised then what she was doing and raised the laced glove hand that still held the knife to her lips to wipe away the drool that she could feel forming. It was too much temptation and she knew it, she couldn't help herself.
It would just be a quick moment, nothing more than a quick touch there was enough gin in him to knock out an elephant.
She climbed across him lap, the knife resting against the clothes of him abdomen, she undid the buttons of his trousers first and slipped her hand into them. She brushed her finger tips against the flesh feeling the quickening there and the moistness of her own flesh as she thought about it. She thought about the feeling of him being in her, as she gently rocked backwards and forwards taking for herself the one thing that she wanted. And it wasn't like she hadn't earned it all these years, babysitting first his silly slip of a wife and now him.
She could end it all now, end her pain and him, him missing her and herself wanting him and not being able to have him. the pain of the feeling she had for him balanced with the deep empty nothing that he felt for her, she didn't doubt that she was little more to him than a landlady and a part time accomplice. A tool for his revenge and now in this moment with the peak of his erection rubbing against the silk of her dress she hated him, she had wasted her life pining for him and there was nothing that she could do, nothing to erase him.
She considered him for a moment, the delicate twitch of his eye lid as he smiled in his sleep.
She let her hand release the knife and let her hand trail on the flesh of his cheek, she was right about him, she had been right about him all along,
He was beautiful.